A partnership for electoral integrity

The ruling party is going to great lengths to use other methods to win the elections that it appears set to lose as its support wanes. It is engaging in intense parliamentary activity in the endeavour to enact articles that will “guarantee” the results with undreamed-of abracadabra numbers that will enable election results to be changed easily thus ensuring certain electoral victory.
 
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The ruling party, resorting to the “alliance” method which it claims to be a new invention despite resembling post-electoral coalitions, is unsure in spite of the “preparations” that the electoral alliance it has formed with the enfeebled MHP will manage to get fifty per cent plus one. For this reason, alongside the MHP’s votes, it is further stoking up the nationalist wave in the attempt to influence neo-nationalist circles whose minds, if you ask me, display very limited confusion, conscious of the need for every last vote.
The big failure in this area, however, is the failure for the “abandoned homeland” of the Felicity Party to succumb to persuasion.
 
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As far as the opposition goes, the situation is a bit more complex. There is a need both to get fifty per cent plus one in the presidential election and to assemble a large configuration of alliances in the second round, and also to win the promising major centres in the local elections, and finally to succeed in inserting a respectable force into parliament in the parliamentary elections. This is clearly no easy matter. To this end, there is a need and necessity to get rid of certain taboos and deactivate propaganda that apparently also influences the CHP base and stand behind a solid left-wing programme and populist electoral strategy.
 
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It is a fact that the CHP has the staff needed to enable it to make a thrust to the left. But those who persistently and vigorously support a positioning on the right not the left are more influential in the party. There must be no forgetting the party administrators who a few days ago objected and concurred with the debate over “reform in religion” and the ruling party that was calling, even for show, for “updating in religion.” But, there can be no doubt that the party that in the days to come will either take things forward or backward will be the main opposition party.
 
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One cannot readily say that the CHP will be capable of performing this task. Meanwhile, the reluctance that could be described as fear of Kurdish politics and the left and the timidity created by the high-pitched threats of the right in its own midst leave its capacity to act atrophied. But there are still possibilities that may alter the situation.
 
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First, the CHP could revise its standing in parliament. Given that the AKP-MHP have the numbers to enable it to enact legislation, leaving them to “their own resources” could be an important initiative and an important strategy that would give a jolt to the rulership. It is not particularly logical to expect the CHP, which has being the “state party” ingrained in its genes, to adopt such an active approach.
 
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The second possibility is for the left to emerge as a force in its own right. There is no such situation just now, but this does not mean that there will not be. The dice have not yet been cast. At the current stage, what must be pulled off with priority and in the short term is to imitate the socialist party that had once taken root in society. Not, for sure, repeating the same political party and stance because Turkey is not the Turkey of those days nor the problems the problems of those days.
 
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But, for all of these possibilities to pay off, there is a need to secure the conditions for an orderly election. So, how are we to ward off the danger that I spoke of at the outset regarding the elections. How will it be ensured that the elections can be conducted with integrity? I wonder if, with a view enabling the elections to be conducted with integrity, a broad, beneficial partnership along the lines of a “Clean Election Partnership” that does not pursue any ideological concerns could be formed?
If you ask me, this is the top-priority matter of the day. Maybe this could also pave the way for other partnerships and combinations of forces and this is what is needed.